Does everyone feel like a fraud sometimes? Or is it just me?

Random musings.

Photo from London’s graffiti tunnel, taken by me

A confession: I sometimes wonder if I claimed the “writer” title simply because others said I should, because writing is supposedly something I’m good at. I’ve never quite believed it myself. In fact, most of the time I feel as though I have no right to be on Substack or Medium or whatever other platform du jour because I’m not nearly as skilled as others in the field. I don’t tend to write voicy pieces. I don’t have a knack for op-eds. And above all, I’m sllllloooooowwwww. It can take hours for me to write even the most basic of ledes to an interview, so penning a hot take is a non-starter for me. By the time I’ve come up with a take, the issue is more lukewarm than hot.

Take, for instance, the Dave Grohl fiasco. I, like pretty much everyone else who had deemed him a Good Guy, was stunned by the revelation that he had a love child with an unnamed woman. To me, though, the collective reaction to the news said more about us than it does about Dave. The universal “We” so desperately needed a decent male figure to look up to that we projected our hopes and dreams onto him. He’s not only talented, he’s nice! He feeds the homeless! He adores his kids! He loves his mom! He’s been happily married for 21 years! Understandably, when it turned out he maybe wasn’t so happily wed and he wasn’t exactly faithful, we were all disappointed. But is that our fault? Or his?

Anyway, I mulled over these thoughts but couldn’t think of a way to express them succinctly or intelligently in writing. And then this morning I read my friend Vivian’s incredible take on it all. She writes, in part…

All I know is, anyone who tells you the midlife crisis isn’t real can go FCK themselves. When you’ve lived long enough to consider the limits of your timeline trajectory realistically and have seen more than a few close friends die, all you see when you look forward are things winding down, and what (or in this case, who) you’ve yet to do or don’t get to do anymore can taunt you as it hovers in the ether like a holy grail full of water from the fountain of youth, just out of reach. For Dave, this apparition appeared in the form of getting some strange.

I mean, COME ON. That’s some writing right there.

I know that it’s detrimental to compare one’s talent or skills to another. I’m never going to write like Viv because I’m not Viv. I’m never going to write like Taffy Brodesser-Akner or Shirley Jackson or Emily St. John Mandel or Ani DiFranco or Cheryl Strayed or Lucy Foley or Tana French or any of the other writers I admire, simply because I am not them. I do not see the world through their eyes or have the ability to conjure their lived experiences.

And yet, thanks to this social media saturated world we live in, my ego (better yet, my id) has been trained to assume that I have no right to call myself a writer. It tells me that because I don’t have the same skills, same level of followers, as many subscribers, or as many likes as other writers, I’m not cut out for this gig.

Still, I keep forging ahead, because at the end of the day, I don’t know what I’d do if I were to stop writing. Although I don’t always feel comfortable carrying around the title, putting words on the page (or on a screen) is the only way I know how to work through my thoughts. Even if they take time to form. Even if they’re not hot takes. Even if they’re not as deftly written as another writer’s. Maybe the trick to no longer feeling like a fraud is to just fake it til you make it? I’m not sure. Guess I’ll keep writing and posting and sharing and will let you know how it all turns out.